Intro -- Richard Heyduck LO14151

Richard Heyduck (rheyduck@sprynet.com)
Wed, 02 Jul 1997 14:22:42 +0100

I have recently read The Fifth Discipline and am working my way through
the Fieldbook. I pastor a small United Methodist Church in NE Texas, and
see many potentially useful techniques/approaches in LO study. I have
been working my entire two years here to lead the church to develop a
shared vision, so that component is not new. My studies in Philosophy make
the mental modeling easy to follow. The newest aspect to me is the systems
approach.

Right now what I see in my congregation is a Reinforcing System. With
mostly retired folks (and an average age over 65), the church has been in
decline since the mid 1960s, with the most precipitous drop coming in the
past ten years. Things turned around a bit after my arrival, but I don't
see the change as very substantial or ultimately long lasting. A new
pastor is a cosmetic change - they need a change of system.

This atmosphere of decline (people and resources) produces fear in the
church leadership - "Will the church be here in 10 years?" This fear
leads to a tighter control on church resources and happenings. This
tighter control, as far as I can tell, leads to further decline. An so on
ad nauseum.

Some of the contributing factors:

* Most are retired government employees
* A very strict view of money management - the official Board is
expected to approve every expense.
* The community itself is in decline with the gradual decline of the
major local employer - Red River Army Depot.
* There is a major educational/cultural gap between myself and my
people: I'm ABD in my doctoral work and most of them are HS grads
at best
* I have great difficulty getting people to respond to what I say,
whether in my preaching, teaching, or board presentations. For the
most part they just stare at me. My conclusion is that I'm failing
to communicate. Their explanation is that they're just not very
responsive people.
* The culture of the current members is very diferent from the
culture of those who are prospective members/patricipants, and the
congregation seems unable to recognize this

I'm trying to study the situation more. Right now I've failed in my last
two major attempts to even discuss our shared vision in Board meetings.
I'm going back to one on one discussions with influential people in the
congregation. If any of y'all have any ideas for me, I'd love to hear
them.

Richard Heyduck

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Richard Heyduck <rheyduck@sprynet.com>


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